"Virutally unintelligible to non-Australians" ~~ Harry Hutton

WINDOW DRESSING

The idea for an annual Twenty20 fiesta in India has been defended by all and sundries as a necessary "window" for fitting the short caper into the international schedule. Spin. If the T20 in India is a raging success, you'd have to be a very thick thicko indeed not to be able to see that other countries will want their cut and eat it, too.

Can you imagine the phoodboll countries looking at the English Premier League and concluding that because the EPL is too good they may as well fold? Of course not. The EPL is probably the biggest phoodboll competition on the orb - at least from our anglicized perspective - but there are plenty of other strong La Leegas, Seeriah Ays, Boondessleegas, and Copper Del Mericas; even our own Ay Leeg is looking to increase its profile. Certainly none have shut up shop because the EPL is currently rocking.

Crash has a fair point in today's News papers: India are laughing because the T20 festivals will strengthen their own player development. But it's not an entirely valid point. Has the EPL made England the best soccer nation? No. Who doesn't love it when the red tops embark on their yearly slam-a-thon of hopeless England (Swedes 2 Turnips 1), the cheating opposition (Achtung!) or the blind ump... referees (Swiss Banker!). What the EPL does, apart from churn big money, is increase the depth of soccer ability world wide.

In the same way I'm not against the EPL being big business, I'm not against T20. I don't take much notice of the format, but nor do I take much notice of ice hockey, tennis, horse racing, golf, any motor racing format or large mouth bass fishing. I pretty much contain my interests to AFL, Test cricket, NFL and major league baseball, but all the rest merrily exist without any input from me.

And they are all professional. Just like T20 is now professional.

Someone needs to tell that to the papers; Saturday's headlines were particular gloat-fests. The Herald Sun: Another Poor Return. Aussies win but million dollar batsmen fail again.The Strayan: Money cannot buy runs. Bad Day at the office for cricket's new millionaires.

Perspective, please. The combined total of the T20 Aussie bids was $7.39 million. Tiger Woods can make that in a handful of tournaments. Roger Federer likewise. Same for good AND bad boxers, loads of phoodboll players, and pretty much everyone in the American baseball except for the kid who picks up the bats. You don't see the papers getting stuck into the likes of Woods, Federer, Tom Brady because the make big money.

Mind you, what you do see is the press getting stuck into players who fail to live up to their price tag, which I suppose is what Saturday's papers were doing. It will be interesting to see if the IPL signees live up to their auction value. Imagine if Dhoni Kebab strolls out and makes a string of ducks, drops sitters, or is caught cheating like he might have been yesterday with his cheaty gloves.

That's the "beauty" of professional sport: your reputation is on the line. That's why I love major league baseball. Watching a clutch pitcher or hitter perform when the heat is on goes to the very essence of competitive sport. The same goes for Michael Jordan. He was not a superstar because he could sink buckets with his eyes closed, he was a superstar because he could sink buckets with his eyes closed with half a second left in a big match and everyone in the opposition trying to stop him.

That will be one of the attractions of the T20. Will players deliver? The cricket, from a purist's perspective, will mostly be crap, but big money has cranked up the pressure. Who will crack first?

Which all leads me onto another thing: the bagging of Roy, Ponting and Flatty for their string of failures. How come none of the experts zero in on the conditions? Those three batsmen, and loads others around the cricket world have, for numerous years, been able to rock up to a match and swing through the line on straight and true decks. Straya's whole Fifty50 - Frankie Leach used that term on Offsiders yesterday; bet he reads the AGB - philosophy is to swing big. But this season they haven't been able to do so; most every deck has been two paced and difficult to score on. Of course batsmen used to loverly roads have struggled. Then what happened yesterday? The SCG served up a run feast on a true pitch. A pity. Which have been the better matches? The low scoring scraps or Sunday's run glut? I've already seen yesterday's match described as a thriller. Balls! High scoring matches that suit their commercial imperative might be good for CricAussie and Channel Nine, but not for me. It can only be a matter of time until Richie Benaud works a T20 match and says "You simply must bat out the full 20 overs."

Will I follow the IPL? Yes, but not strongly. I was conceived in Calcutta, so I will follow Kolkata. But that's about it.

Having said ALL that, the threat to Test cricket, by far the best sport in the world, is very real. Mark asks a valid question:

How long before a centrally contracted English player decides that the
lure of half a million a year for three years from the IPL is a better
deal that about 20% of that over a shorter period from the ECB?

On a related note, Jonathan Agnew in today's Observer says that KP is looking 'distracted'. I wonder why that is?!

When Steve Waugh was trying to inspire his Aussie side to win in India, he christened the challenge the 'final frontier'. Now that saying is irrelevant. India has become the epicentre of the cricket world. For all the flack the BCCI cops you have to give them credit for the IPL. It's a great idea. It's the sought of thing we should be doing in Australia.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Players are only worth what they are worth to the IPL because of their deeds elsewhere. Players who play de novo for IPL will not attract that sort of money. Therefore they will have to showcase their wares in another form of cricket before succumbing to the lure of Mammon. India is a market unto itself, and I think Test cricket is still viable - but the days of tours to Bangladesh and endless CB series are over.

That said, the money in county cricket has certainly attracted the cream of the umpiring fraternity away from Test cricket, and the IPL looks to be doing the same.

There is, obviously, a much bigger luck element in T20 than in the other forms of the game. If young domestic players have their salaries and futures based on how well they play in T20, then their careers will be very rollercoastery. When there's a lot of luck involved, you need a lot of games to sort out the good from the lucky, and the bad from the unlucky.

Which leads on to the IPL expanding, which I think it will. This will make the eventual winners more likely to be the best team, and start to encroach on the rest of the cricketing calendar. As long as its only ODI's that get pushed out of the way, I'm happy.

I agree with Tone that there'll be other leagues set up, presumably with most of them running at the same time as the IPL, to minimise conflicts.

chrisl: No English players have yet been signed up, but they'll probably start soon. County cricketers tend to be paid pretty well, so there's less of an incentive for them to go to India. Most of the players on the county circuit wouldn't command huge IPL salaries, but some of them will (Dmitri Mascarenhas's name as been suggested) do pretty well for themselves.